Our Lady of Sorrows: The Goth Madonna

Catholic Goths can embrace any saint they like, but my personal preference is Our Lady of Sorrows. Part of it is her Goth aesthetic, her sadness and pained face and dark clothes and her heart pierced by daggers.

Our Lady of Sorrows is just one facet of her presence in the life of Catholics. In the prayer Hail Holy Queen, there is a line "To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve". But we are not the banished children of Eve, as Mary is the new Eve, made so with her obedience and we are her children, given to us by Christ as He suffered on the cross, His death imminent, she is given into the care of John the Beloved, and becomes our Mother.

Like all mothers, but more than any, she suffered through the pains and doubts as she watched over her Son. She and Joseph protected Him when Herod sent out his soldiers looking for the Messiah, to murder Him so Herod would never be usurped. They came back and Jesus grows up, preparing to be the Teacher of Salvation, to pull His followers to Him, to tell the world that hope and love had come to them. So, she had to let Him go, to be tempted of the devil while He fasted and prayed to prepare. There must have been a tearing in her heart to see Him go. She knew He would belong to God and the world then, no longer just to her.

She likely heard of Him though. The Bible doesn't tell us much about what she knew, but word was spreading of Him and His teachings and she likely knew of the resistance He received from temple leaders, the Pharisees and Sadducees who muttered against Him, who tried to foul Him up. She even saw the indifference and discontent of the people of Nazareth when He came home.

I imagine her anxiety when Jesus tells her He is going to Jerusalem. I wonder if He confided in her that He was to finish His mission on earth, that He would experience the thing He was borne on this earth to accomplish. I wonder if He told her what to expect. That He would be betrayed by one of His own. That He would be dragged from court to court in an attempt to get something done about Him. The temple feared His influence, His disregard for the systems installed to make money and influence for the temple and its leaders. And then, finally He would be given up to cruel hands who would nearly beat Him to death, then walk Him all that long way up to the Place of the Skull, and nail His wounded, bleeding body on a cross and would see Him die. She must have traveled to Jerusalem with Him and the Twelve and Mary Magdalene to celebrate Passover. I hope she got to see Him to make His triumphal entry, hear His sermon in the great temple, even to see Him in anger, tipping the tables of the money changers and the ones who sold animals for sacrifices for the forgivement of sin. Would there have been a private moment for Jesus and His mother before he went to Gethsemane to pray. Would He have held her a moment? Would she have kissed His cheek?

Her sorrows: the hiding, the protecting, the nourishing, the letting go, the anxiety, the fear, the agony, yes, the anger unexpressed. The sadness and mourning and then, the final vision, the great goodbye, and then her own mission and travels, as she too was empowered by the Holy Spirit.

We Catholic Goths get it. She found her grace and life of service to God in the darkness, the cover of night, the poor stable, the anonymity of Egypt, one step ahead of peril, the grey colors of loneliness her sorrow for her loss. Her separation from the love of her life, the shadows before dawn. Goths relate to her and embrace her to us and take her for our mother who prays for us to our Brother Jesus, and God our Father.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us who have recourse to thee.